Knot Perfect

One man is on the quest to revolutionize how the world ties its sneakers.

Not when you can tie an Ian Knot, which is genuinely a lovely thing. On Fieggen's Web site, an animated flip-book walks neophytes through the six-step process. The color-coded laces help. Still, the best way to learn this perfectly symmetrical knot is to follow a video tutorial. With practice, you should be able to tie an Ian's Knot in a few eye blinks. Some get there quicker than others.

"After three tries, I could do it in less than a second," wrote Charlie, from New Mexico, on Fieggen's site.

For me, it becomes an exercise in frustration. I'm not a great knotter to begin with, and as Fieggen explains, breaking your lacing habits can be especially difficult. Part of it is physical. Even after Fieggen devised his knot, he had problems: "Many mornings, I'd revert to the previous way, because I was so used to it." But relearning knotting challenges more than just muscle memory. There's something deeper.

The answer emerges as Fieggen discusses his old habit of correcting people in public: "I used to alarm people when I'd offer to tell them why their laces were coming undone. They'd get very defensive." But why? "People have recollections of how difficult it was to learn to tie their laces," he says. "It was traumatic. To suddenly be told that they're going to have to learn it all over again, fear builds up. They feel incompetent."

Eventually, I overcome my incompetence and learn the Ian Knot. And though a few weeks later I still can't say that I've made it my go-to everyday knot, news of my accomplishment makes Fieggen happy, and that makes me feel good. What I find most lovely is how his pleasure seems disconnected from ego. Yes, his knot is eponymous, but I never get the sense that his world of laces has anything to do with his name being trumpeted.

Over and over, Fieggen talks about symmetry. There's beauty in the way your shoes appear when your laces drape perfectly, and there's grace in the way each hand moves in unison with the other. But Fieggen insists that his knot represents something bigger than aesthetic harmony. The Ian Knot, he asserts, can heal: "You can't do it wrong," he says, "so you can't teach it wrong."

Fieggen begins to get excited. "Teach lacing the way it is taught today, and you will always have kids failing," he says. "There are always going to be right-handed parents teaching left-handed kids, and vice versa." Fieggen pauses to make sure I understand. "Those kids," he continues, "are the ones who are going to look at shoelaces as something to worry about."

I visualize learning to tie my shoes for the first time. My grandfather was instructing me, but I couldn't get it right. Finally, we resorted to bunny ears. Even then, things kept coming undone. He was right-handed; I'm a lefty.

Suddenly, I can taste a bit of Fieggen's fervor. "So if you can eradicate the granny knot for just one generation," I say, "then you've fixed it all!" It could end untied shoes as we know them.

Fieggen gently corrects me. A world of safe and secure laces depends upon people understanding the mechanics behind his creation: symmetry itself. "You can't just show them how to tie the knot," he says. "You have to let people know why the knot is secure. If they don't know that and they can't inform the next generation, it will be lost again."

To that end, the man who used to intercept granny-knotters in local malls wants to go to schools and spread the gospel. Fieggen wants to develop curriculums. "In a previous life," he says, "I must have been a teacher. I think that's what I was born for."

Fieggen tells me that after working exclusively on laces for three years, soon he'll be returning to his day job. But his site now gets thousands of visits a day, and the Ian Knot seems to be catching on: At least a dozen knock-off videos are cropping up on YouTube. In some cases, the knot and the creator are not named. In others, credit is taken by somebody else. Fieggen remains gracious. "I gave a name to something I invented," he says. "And there are some other people who appear to have invented it themselves. Maybe we all invented our own knots."

There is no sorrow, no anger over provenance. Because it isn't about where the knot came from. It is about, Fieggen believes, where his knot is going.